come near us,’ she yelled. ‘You’re scaring the horse.’
She made eye contact for a fraction of a second and knew she had a serious problem on her hands. The boy on the bike knew perfectly well that he was scaring the horse.
Evi pulled hard, turning Duchess to face the hill. If the horse was going to bolt, they had to go upwards.
There was another one, travelling in the opposite direction. Two teenage boys, on high-performance bikes, riding round the high wall that circled the two churches. It was utter suicide, they were going to collide, to fall six feet on to hard, flint cobbles. The boys got within two feet of each other and then one disappeared, his bike finding some ridge that took him down into the churchyard. The remaining rider shot past Evi as she fought to get Duchess under control.
There were more of them. Four young stunt-riders, travelling at impossible speeds around the old walls, pennants flying from their handlebars, brakes screaming as they spun around corners.
‘Get lost, you stupid buggers!’ she managed to shout. Horses hated bikes at the best of times, the combination of silence and speed completely unnerved them. And these four were buzzing around her like mosquitoes. They kept coming back, disappearing behind the wall and then reappearing somewhere else. Here was a fifth, sneaking up behind her, cutting in front. Duchess threw up her head, spun on the spot and set off at a fast canter down the hill.
Urgent shouting. Hooves skidding. A short smack of something that might have been pain but at the time felt more like outrage.
And then silence.
Evi was lying on the ground, staring at a piece of litter that had caught between two cobbles and wondering if she was still alive. A second later she got her answer. A drop of blood landed on the stone and she watched it tremble in the breath from her mouth.
She knew there was pain waiting for her, but the part of her brain that normally took charge was spinning away, leaving her behind. She was lost amidst cold, white softness, but feeling hot – so very hot – and watching a tiny stream trickle away from her, wondering why a mountain stream should be crimson and knowing, even in that first moment, that her old life was over.
‘Hold on, I’ll be there in a sec!’
Someone had called to her, that last time, in a language she couldn’t understand. Someone had yelled instructions at her in a Germanic tongue and she’d stared upwards, at the bluest sky she’d ever seen, and known that movement was beyond her. Might be beyond her for the rest of—
‘Don’t move. I’m almost done. Alice! Tom! Can you hear me?’
And then she’d been surrounded by tall, fair-haired men who’d smelled of beer and sun-cream and they’d sent words down to her, meant to comfort, to keep her calm, while they trussed her up and pinned her tight and sent her spinning away again, down the mountain …
‘It’s OK, don’t try and get up. I’ve caught your horse, he’s perfectly safe.’ A man was kneeling beside her, one hand gently on her shoulder, speaking to her in a strange accent. ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance but I’ve left my phone in the church. I can’t leave you in the road … Alice! Tom!’
Evi raised her head and moved it slowly from right to left, up and down. There was a pounding in her forehead but her neck felt fine. She flexed her right foot inside her boot and then her left. Both did what they were supposed to. She put both palms on the cobbles and pushed. There was a sharp pain in her ribs but she knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t serious.
‘No, don’t move.’ The voice was close to her ear again. ‘The Fletchers were here a minute ago. They can’t have gone far. No, I really don’t think you should …’
Evi was sitting up. The man kneeling beside her, though tall, looked too slightly built to be German or Austrian. And these hills all around her weren’t mountains. They were moors, just turning the soft, deep purple of a fresh bruise.
‘Are you OK?’ asked the fair-haired man, who was dressed in shorts and a running vest. Boys on bikes. Duchess panicking. She’d been rescued by a passing jogger. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he was saying.
‘Everywhere,’ grumbled Evi, discovering she could speak. ‘Nothing serious. Where’s Duchess?’